Maryland-based organization returns competition to Baltimore/Washington area

The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®) today announced six finalists that will compete for the 2008 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences in Baltimore and Washington, DC this year.

Reflecting the wide-ranging use of operations research, the finalists include a Fortune 500 company, three teams from Western Europe, and two federal agencies.

The 2008 Franz Edelman finalists are:

1. Federal Aviation Administration, for a project entitled “Airspace Flow Programs,” which gives the FAA greater ability to control the nation’s skies at times of peak consumer usage and flight congestion.

2. Netherlands Railways, for “The New Dutch Timetable: The O.R. Revolution,” a solution that improved on-time performance and capacity for more than a million daily train passengers.

3. StatoilHydro, one of the world’s largest gas producers, and Gassco, the independent Norwegian network operator, for “Optimizing the Offshore Pipeline System for Natural Gas in the North Sea.”

4. The City of Stockholm, Sweden for “Operations Research (O.R.) Improves Quality and Efficiency in Social Care and Home Help,” a program that has brought improvements to the complex scheduling of more than 4,000 providers who help the sick and the elderly.

5. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for “Reducing Security Risks in American Drinking Water Systems.”

6. Xerox, for “LDP Lean Document Production® - Dramatic Productivity Improvements for the Printing Industry,” which has bettered production and reduced costs for print shops and document manufacturers. The total impact to date on Xerox profits from the utilization of the LDP is about $200M. Xerox has filed 48 patents on this methodology and so far 11 have issued.

This is the 37th year of the prestigious Franz Edelman competition. The winner will be announced at a special awards banquet on April 14 at Applying Science to the Art of Business: the 2008 INFORMS Conference on OR/MS Practice. The conference takes place in Baltimore from April 13-15 http://meetings.informs.org/Practice08/.